The Why Files: Operation Podcast - 92: Shadow People and The Hat Man | Who are they? What do they want?

Episode Date: December 24, 2022

Here's how it happens. You're drifting off to sleep; or maybe you wake up in the middle of the night. You feel a presence in the room. You see something out of the corner of your eye. You try to look but you can't move. You try to call out, but you're unable to make a sound. There's an invisible weight on your chest. Even breathing is difficult. You strain to look and then you see it. The shadow of a person. You can't detect any features but every instinct you have tells you: this is entity is not friendly. You hear a light hum, maybe a rush of air and the dark entity vanishes. You've just encountered a shadow person.  This one was pretty benign, but there are some shadow people sightings that are more intense. More real. These encounters can be traumatic and in some cases: violent. I should know. Because it happened to me. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thewhyfiles/support

Everyone's got a pro. Need tires? I've got a pro. Car making a weird sound? I've got a pro. So who's that pro? The pros at Tread Experts. From tires to auto repair, Tread Experts is always there, helping you with Kumo tires you can trust. Until June 15th, receive up to $60 on a prepaid MasterCard when you purchase Kumo RoadVenture AT52 tires. Find your pro at your local TradExperts. From tires to auto repair, we're always there. TradExperts.ca Hey, it's your buddy AJ from the Y-Files. And Hecklefish. Right, and Hecklefish. We just wanted to tell you that if you want to start a podcast, Spotify makes it easy. It'd have to be easy for humans to understand it. Will you stop that?

I'm just saying. Spotify for Podcasters lets you record and edit podcasts from your computer. I don't have a computer. Do you have a phone? Of course I have a phone. I'm not a savage. Well, with Spotify, you can record podcasts from your phone, too. Spotify makes it easy to distribute your podcast to every platform

and you can even earn money. I do need money. What do you need money for? You kidding? I'm getting killed on guppy support payments. These 3X wives are expensive. You don't want to support your kids? What are you need money for? You kidding? I'm getting killed on guppy support payments. These 3X wives are expensive. You don't want to support your kids? What are you, my wife's lawyer now? Never mind. And I don't know if you noticed, but all Y-Files episodes are video, too.

And there's a ton of other features, but you... But we can't be here all day. Will you settle down? I need you to hurry up with this stupid commercial. I got a packed calendar today. I'm sorry about him. Anyway, check out Spotify for Podcasters. It's free, no catch, and a packed calendar today. I'm sorry about him. Anyway, check out Spotify for podcasters. It's free, no catch, and you could start today. Are we done? We're done,

but you need to check your attitude. Excuse me, but I don't have all day to sit here and talk about Spotify. This would go a lot faster if you would just let me get through it. Here's how it happens. You're drifting off to sleep, or maybe you wake up in the middle of the night. You feel a presence in the room. You see something out of the corner of your eye. You try to look, but you can't move. You try to call out, but you're unable to make a sound. There's an invisible weight on your chest.

Even breathing is difficult. You strain to look, and then you see it. The shadow of a person. You can't detect any features, but every instinct you have tells you this entity is not friendly. You hear a light hum, maybe a rush of air, and the dark entity vanishes. You've just encountered a shadow person. Now, this one was pretty benign, but there are some shadow people sightings that are more intense, more real. These encounters can be traumatic and in some cases, violent.

I should know because it happened to me. Every culture has their own paranormal legends. Asian cultures, European, American, and so on. Some myths exist in cultural subsets like religions and individual countries. Even small towns and neighborhoods have their own legends. People raised in Michigan might not know what a chupacabra is, but they've heard of the dog man. Americans might laugh at the story of Krampus, the evil version of Santa Claus who is half goat, half demon and punishes children, but mention him to kids in Germany or Austria and they won't find it funny. Visitors to Ronkonkoma, New York enjoy swimming in the clear lake in the middle of town.

But locals don't go in the water out of fear of Tuscawanta, the Algonquin princess who drowns one young man every year in search of true love. Or the crab cat. The what? No, the crab cat. All goldfish are afraid of him. He's half crab, half cat, who works in a sushi bar in the underworld. They have sushi in the underworld?

Before the crab cat appears, you hear him sharpening his blade, and the room will smell like sake. If the crab cat catches you, he meows, Oh, Mikase! Then he cuts off one of your fins, and you spend all of eternity swimming in circles. Circles? Oh, because he cuts off one fin and... Fear the crab cat! Fear the crab cat.

Whether a chupacabra, evil Santa Claus, or a crab cat, these stories couldn't be any more different. But one legend is universal. Shadow people. Shadow people are seen in every culture on Earth. And shadow people encounters have been happening for thousands of years. And of all the thousands or maybe millions of shadow people encounters over the years, the descriptions are eerily similar. Most often, they appear as nothing more than silhouettes.

They lack defining characteristics. You can feel that there are facial features there, but you can't see them. The majority of shadow people sightings happen when you're in bed at night, though they have been seen outside, especially in dark wooded areas. But a few shadow people have been seen in broad daylight. It's not uncommon to hear a humming or a buzzing or a whooshing sound when a shadow person is present. And some people hear electricity and some people hear the shadow person whispering or even screaming in their ear. In most cases, the shadow people will disappear when you see them. They'll zip into a corner, fly through a wall or just fade away. shadow person whispering or even screaming in their ear. In most cases, the shadow people will disappear when you see them. They'll zip into a corner, fly through a wall, or just fade away.

But in some rare cases, shadow people don't disappear. They become more clear and detailed. And in very rare cases, shadow people can be violent. Hey, Jane Hecklefish. The first attached image was from the West Virginia Penitentiary in Moundsville, West Virginia. It's a really tricky place that my paranormal team and myself have investigated many times. This was captured in the cafeteria by our night vision camera. We investigate incomplete darkness and heard movement behind us. The camera captured this figure and it's known to haunt this location. The second attached image was caught by

Oakmont Paranormal in a joint investigation of the Andrew Carnegie Library and Music Hall in Pittsburgh. It looks to have glowing eyes. The lady sitting in front of the figure called our attention to the movement around her and said that she was feeling sick. We're going to do a complete walkthrough. But you've got to say something. You've got to do something. No, I... God!

No! No! Oh. The Choctaw have been in America for almost 4,000 years. They were among the five civilized tribes as described by Europeans, meaning the Choctaw had an organized and advanced society. They had a high literacy rate. They had centralized governments with written constitutions. They had a merchant class and would trade with other tribes as well as with Europeans. The Choctaw would accept white and black people into their tribes through marriage.

And despite all these modern sensibilities, the Choctaw had a rich mythology. They have a story about the Nalusa Chito. This is a shadow being who appears when someone allows evil thoughts to enter their mind. The Nalusa Chito appears while they're sleeping and devours their soul. These entities are so terrifying to the Choctaw

that to this day, many people will not say the name. The Choctaw also have Nelusifilea, which literally translates to long black being. This is a shadow person who lives in the woods and appears at dusk to torment hunters and children who stray too far from camp. Cultures from all over the world have similar legends. Medieval Europeans fear the incubus who assaults women while they sleep. The succubus assaults men. The word nightmare comes from ancient Germanic or Norse. A mare or mara is a demon that sits on your chest and tries to strangle you while you sleep.

This creature is known as Kikimora to Russians, Czechs, and Poles. Even the Sumerians 5,000 years ago told stories of the alu. The alu roams the night searching for victims who are asleep. The alu can paralyze you, possess you, and put you in a coma. In Arabian and Islamic mythology and theology, jinn are supernatural creatures

created from smokeless and scorching fire. Many Muslims believe the jinn are real. An individual member of the jinn is known as a jinnie, and this is where we get the word genie. Like rub the lamp genie? Yep. Oh no.

Prince Ali, mighty as he, Ali Ababwa. Strong as ten, regular man definitely. He's faced the galloping hordes. A hundred bad guys with swords. Who sent the goons to their lords Why Prince Ali Oh you didn't see that coming

I did I was just hoping to avoid it The djinn are typically invisible But when they want to be seen They can take any shape they want They're often seen as large shadowy figures Djinn are able to take control of a human's body, but they can only do this if the victim is in a weakened state. Feelings of unhappiness and depression can make someone vulnerable to a Djinn. Djinn have free will

and can be either good or evil. The good ones will support, assist, or protect humans, but the evil ones, they can kill you. Everyone's got a pro. Need tires? I've got a pro. Car making a weird sound? I've got a pro. So who's that pro? The pros at Tread Experts. From tires to auto repair, Tread Experts is always there, helping you with

Kumo tires you can trust. Until June 15th, receive up to $60 on a prepaid MasterCard when you purchase Kumo RoadVenture AT52 tires. Find your pro at your local TreadExperts. From tires to auto repair, we're always there. TreadExperts.ca You searched for your informant

who disappeared without a trace. You knew there were witnesses, but lips were sealed. You swept the city, driving closer to the truth. While curled up on the couch with your cat. There's more to imagine when you listen. Discover heart-pounding thrillers on Audible. You searched for your informant who disappeared without a trace.

You knew there were witnesses, but lips were sealed. You swept the city, driving closer to the truth. While curled up on the couch with your cat. There's more to imagine when you listen. Discover heart-pounding thrillers on Audible. You searched for your informant who disappeared without a trace. You knew there were witnesses, but lips were sealed. You swept the city, driving closer to the truth.

While curled up on the couch with your cat. There's more to imagine when you listen. Discover heart-pounding thrillers on Audible. At a job site, there were more than a few of them. Could never look at them straight on or they would vanish. The dogs reacted to them every time they appeared. Everyone at the job site saw them. The site was up in the northern California foothills near Copperopolis.

This area was active Native American territory. Also was very active during the gold rush. I would be sitting in a chair in the guard shack looking down the long driveway when something would catch my eye in my peripheral view. If I turn forward to a bit of a vanish, if I focus my view down the road, I can see the outline of a person. Mostly like a shadow, as if the apparition absorbed light rather than reflect. Part of our passs involved sharing what the shadow people did during that shift. Too many corroborated witness accounts to write it off. The f*** is this mean?

Americans are familiar with the Vietnam War, the proxy war between Cold War superpowers that lasted from 1955 to 1975. But what about the Laotian Civil War, which happened at the same time? It was fought between the Kingdom of Laos, supported by the United States and its allies, against Lao communists. It's also known as the Secret War in American intelligence circles because CIA recruited thousands of fighters from the local Hmong population to hold back the communists. Well, the secret war did not go well for the CIA. The Hmong people became refugees and thousands of them fled to the United States. When the Hmong arrived in America, suddenly young healthy men were dying in their sleep.

Over a hundred men died this way and doctors had no idea what caused it. But the Hmong did know what caused it. They believe in an evil night spirit that sits on your chest until you suffocate. They call it a pressure demon. But as long as you're faithful to your rituals and keep your ceremonial objects near your bed, you're safe. The Hmong believed that they were being punished by shadow entities for leaving their homeland.

To this day, there's no medical explanation as to why all these young men died. When this story appeared in the LA Times, Wes Craven was inspired to write A Nightmare on Elm Street. Freddy Krueger is actually based on a shadow person. And as frequent as shadow people encounters were throughout history,

it seemed to be a fringe phenomenon. Something that happened in faraway lands in ancient civilizations. Nobody knew how common shadow people sightings were. But all of that would change in 2001 when shadow people would go mainstream. When I was on active duty in the Marine Corps stationed at Camp Tendleton, California, I had an encounter with a shadow person.

Late at night on a weekend, I was alone in the barracks, stone cold sober. My roommate was on the other side of the base. As I go to bed, I turn over and slightly open my eyes. At this point, I see a shadowy figure come out from my roommate's closet and walk to his bed. I could see arms and legs moving. I see it literally crawl into his bed, and clear as day I see the thing turn over like it was looking at me. In a panic, I back into the wall, never

blinking and staring at what I just saw. I grab my phone and turn the flashlight on, only to see the bed empty. A few weeks later, I finally tell my roommate what I saw, and he was speechless, and said he saw something similar a few days before I told him. Somebody in there? No, no, no. Find one. Find something. If somebody's in there, they come out. Yeah, we need to get the f*** out of here.

Seriously, going on. Yeah, we need to get the f*** out of here. Seriously, what's going on? My husband and I are paranormal investigators. We lived in Oklahoma. We decided to check out the Joplin spook light. I had just turned the car off while my husband said he could hear a conversation coming from the field next to us. We didn't think anyone would be out in the dark in the cold rain just having a conversation. As I looked past my husband toward the field, I saw from the corner of my eye the light shining into the car was being blocked, starting from the left to the right. I quickly

turned my head and watched as one, two, three, four shadows ran behind the car and completely blocked the light from the yard light. Although he had driven about a hundred miles to investigate the spook light, I put the car in gear and noped it out of there after parking for less than three minutes. My belief, anyway, is that shadow people don't really have anyone's best interest at heart, and I prefer not to spend time in the company of them. My belief, anyway, is that shadow people don't really have anyone's best interest at heart, and I prefer not to spend time in the company of them. ¿Para qué empieza la calle? ¡Dios! ¡La puta que te parió! ¡La puta que te parió!

¡Concha de la lora! ¡La concha de la lora. Concha de la lora. Pero como mierda puede ser que no haya nada. Ya la tercera vez. In April 2001, Art Bell took a random call on Coast to Coast AM. The caller told Art a story about shadow people. Nobody had ever heard of shadow people before, at least not by this name. But Art found the story interesting and asked if anyone else in the audience had a similar encounter. Well, 4,500 stories came in. And last week, I asked viewers of the Y-Files to send their Shadow People stories. We got almost 300 submissions in one day. Art Bell got way more than you.

Well, of course he did. He's Art Bell. You're jealous. I'm not jealous. It's not a competition. Well, yeah, that's what someone who loses a competition says. I'm not competing with Art Bell. Oh, that's abundantly clear. Shadow people will fall into one of a few types. The first is just a black mist without any form. It may look like a cloud of slowly moving smoke. You know this is a shadow person because you can feel a presence or a negative energy in the room. Next, human-shaped shadows.

These shadow people clearly have a body, head, and shoulders, though you can't make out any features. Even though you can't see their face, you still get the sense it's looking at you. Like the black mist shadows, these typically disappear when you look directly at them, and this encounter is when the shadow people started appearing. When I was eight, I was experiencing a lot of turmoil in my life due to an alcoholic and abusive father. At this point is when the shadow people started appearing, never doing anything, just watching. It scared me, but I dare not say anything for fear of being beaten. As the years passed, my paranormal experiences increased to beyond shadow people.

I started seeing and interacting with full apparitions. Once I was with my best friend as a teenager, and a man walked up to us and just said, everything is going to be okay. He then walked past us and vanished. My friend just stood there speechless and in shock. When I asked him if he knew that man, he said, yes, he's my uncle, but he died two years ago. As a young man while in the military, I was stationed at Subic Bay Naval Base in the Moving up in severity, there is the demonic shadow person. These are considered very dangerous. They're similar to human-shaped shadows,

but these have glowing red or yellow eyes. And this creature will speak to you, taunt you, and threaten you and your family. Sometimes the room will smell like sulfur, and often this entity will grab you or even try to strangle you. A more specific shadow person is called the old hag. This entity takes the shape of an old woman

with features that you can see. And she looks like what Western cultures would consider a typical witch. The old hag will paralyze you, climb on top of you, and sometimes try to choke you. And this is another shadow being that you can physically feel.

My wife and I are on vacation in the mountains. In the middle of our first night, I woke up to the sound of whispering coming from a corner of the room. I turned to look and realized I couldn't move. Then I woke up to the sound of whispering coming from a corner of the room. I turned to look and realized I couldn't move. Then I heard footsteps on the carpet, like the sound of feet dragging. Starting to get scared, I desperately tried to move, but I still couldn't. I tried to wake up my wife, but I couldn't speak. Then I felt something sit on the side of my bed. I still couldn't move, but I felt an ice-cold hand on my face

and fingers running through my hair. Then I felt hot breath in my ear and a raspy voice whispered, well, that put me in full-blown panic, but I was still paralyzed. Then I saw it. It was an old woman who looked like a witch. She climbed on top of me and smiled this evil smile. All I could hear was her heavy breath and the sound of my heart pumping through my ears. While holding me down, she started tearing at my clothes. I don't want to get too graphic, but she was violating. As the terror rose, I fought and fought against her, but this just made her laugh. Finally, I could move and she was gone. I told my wife what happened.

We stayed the next two nights on the couch and didn't even go into the bedroom. I was so shaken by the encounter that we ended our trip early. I don't believe in ghosts and I'm not sure I believe in shadow people, but what happened to me felt real. To this day, I've never been more frightened in my life. Then there's a shadow person known as the hat man. He's usually an extremely large shadow creature who wears a wide brimmed hat. Again, Freddy Krueger was a hat man and sightings of the hat man have been

increasing. And many people believe that the hat man is a warning, a sign of the end of times. You sailed beyond the horizon in search of an island scrubbed from every map. You battled krakens and navigated through storms. Your spade struck the lid of a long-lost treasure chest. While you cooked a lasagna. There's more to imagine when you listen. Discover best-selling adventure stories on Audible. My story took place in 2003 when I was 17 years old. I had the single most terrifying experience of my life.

I was asleep in my room when I suddenly woke up paralyzed and sensing an unease in the room. Despite being awake, I was unable to move any part of my body except for my eyes. I knew I was awake because I could hear the TV that had been left on in the upstairs living room directly above me. As I scanned the room, I noticed movement to my right in the corner of the room. The figure seemed to appear from the shadows, standing as tall as my ceiling, menacingly hunched over. It had no noticeable features like eyes or a mouth. The figure was dressed in a tall top hat and slowly floated towards me, its fingers stretching out and seeming to grow in length as I reached out for me. I felt a genuine sense of complete terror wash over me,

like I had never felt before, almost like the feeling of dread was being imposed on me by this being. The entity moved closer and closer, its hand raised in my direction almost in slow motion, and I felt a visceral sense of evil emanating from the figure, a feeling that I had never experienced before and have not felt since. Despite the fear that gripped me, I was also terrified by the intensity of the movement and the eerie unnatural movement of the shadowy figure. Only when the fear became overwhelmingly intense did I finally step out of the paralysis. I am a logical, reasonable person and I did not believe in the paranormal.

That is why, after the initial terror left me, I found the whole experience to be rather entertaining. I mean, the top half was just ridiculous. I never once believed that my experience was real, and I thought that I was simply experiencing a waking dream. It wasn't until several years later, when I was watching a documentary on Netflix called The Nightmare, that I started to feel like maybe it wasn't just a hallucination I experienced all those years earlier. After several minutes into this documentary, someone was recounting their paralysis experience, and they showed a sketch of what they had experienced. To my shock and disbelief, this sketch was the exact same hat man figure that I had seen nearly 10 years earlier. I mean, exact same.

How is this possible? I paused the show, completely frozen in disbelief, as for the first time I knew that I had experienced something otherworldly that others were apparently also experiencing. Seeing a shadowy human figure was easy for me to attribute to some sort of common psychological human manifestation. But the commonality of that very unique top hat, which held no significance to me, was impossible to explain and shook me to my core.

The Hat Man is a type of shadow being, but he has some traits that make him unique. Obviously, the most notable feature of the hat man's shadow entity is his hat. Oh, is it? It's not his button-down cardigan sweater. The type of hat varies by culture. Some say it's a fedora like Freddy Krueger. Some say it's a top hat. In South America, they say he wears a gaucho hat. But regardless of who sees him, the hat is always wide brimmed. Sometimes the hat man has glowing eyes. Witnesses say he wears a cloak or a trench coat. He's always tall.

Sometimes he stands over 10 feet high. One thing everyone agrees on, seeing the hat man is bad news. We were living in a house where a lady hung herself from the rafters of the living room. Upstairs was condemned. Used to be two apartments. There was so much activity up there, you would have thought the apartments were occupied. Once the landlord came to fix a leak from up there, I told him about the activity. He said, no way anyone is up there.

It's locked. It's impossible. I told him there's constant walking around, constant banging, like someone is moving furniture. A couple of days later, my wife and I started hearing the sound of one of those springy things that stopped the door from hitting the wall. Just over and over again. Brown, brown. And it's right behind our door. We open the door and the noise is still happening.

But there's no springy thing. Nowhere for the noise to be coming from. But it's still happening. We looked at each other baffled. After two minutes of the noise, it stops. The broom is leaning behind the bunk bed and it flies out and falls over. The dog is spooked and right then the trash can slides about five feet stopping right before the dog. He freaks and he's ready to get out of the room. Later in the night, our three-year-old daughter wants to

sleep with us. She's in the middle of my wife and I, and at exactly 3 a.m., I'm woken up, and standing over me is the tallest shadow person I've ever seen. Our roof is eight feet, and he was hunched over, staring directly at me. He had a top hat on, and you can see the white in his eyes, and he grinned, and I saw white in his mouth, white teeth, so naturally covered my head and grabbed my baby girl and wife. Looked about three to four minutes later and he was gone. Scared the bejesus out of me.

The hat man can create or is attracted to negative energy. Bad luck, illness, even death follow the hat man. I saw the hat man in 2003. I was lying in bed ready to go to sleep with my boyfriend beside me. I was laying there and looked up and saw the hat man staying behind the door. I had never heard about the hat man or shadow people and I thought I was seeing things or that it was because I had taken a sleeping pill that night. I said, there's a man behind the door.

My boyfriend said, shut up and go to sleep. That should tell you how concerned about it we were. I eventually went to sleep and thought nothing else about it. My boyfriend died in his sleep later that year. It was within a few months of this happening. Sometimes the hat man brings visions of a future apocalypse. Some people who've seen him said he showed them a dark future. Nuclear war, worldwide disease, and famine.

And the hat man sometimes gets attached to entire families, where multiple people can see him. And once he latches on, it's almost impossible to get rid of him. Some people even see him away from their homes, and in daylight. This happened to me 10 years ago when I was a teenager. I was sitting alone at the kitchen table eating. Then a sense of dread and downright paralysis came over me, and I was compelled to look at the kitchen door. Right there, I can clearly see the shadow of a man with a hat and glowing yellow eyes.

I could only watch, not being able to move a muscle. His face was practically a shadow, but I felt him smile in a condescending manner. And just like that, he rounded the corner and disappeared. I'm 100% sure of what I saw. My case cannot be discounted as sleep paralysis because I was wide awake. It was broad daylight around 2 or 3 p.m. So who is the hat man? What are shadow people? Some say ghosts. Some say they're from another time or another dimension. Others say they're from another planet. There is no consensus among paranormal researchers as to what shadow people are.

But the theories are interesting. The obvious theory is that shadow people are ghosts. And when they appear, it's a kind of haunting. But ghosts typically reveal themselves as light or energy, not shadow. And ghosts usually have defined features and clothing. So I don't think that's right. Another theory is that the shadows are astral projections of people who are having out-of-body experiences. I disagree with this one too. People who report seeing astral bodies or astral projections describe them more like ghosts than shadows.

Astral projections usually have features and are usually light, not dark. A very interesting theory is that shadow people are interdimensional travelers. Maybe the shadows are actually people from other dimensions or realities and are here to observe. Maybe the shadow person you see is actually you from another dimension or another timeline. A common theory is that shadow people are demons. Christians who see the hat man have no doubt that he is a demon or the devil himself.

And there's everybody's favorite theory, that shadow people are aliens. There are many shadow people encounters where the entity has large eyes and a small mouth. Some people who've seen this type of shadow being say once they focus, it becomes less like a shadow and more like a creature that's actually there. Also, reports of